The Stone Soup Sunday comic will end next Sunday, the July 26th edition.
It’s no secret to fans of the Jan Eliot-created comic that she’s been planning to wrap it up.
Comedian Frazz will replace Stone Soup on Sunday. La Dépêche currently publishes Frazz in the daily, but we didn’t get it in the Sunday paper. It will appear there in color for the first time in the August 2 edition.
Frazz, by Jef Mallet, according to Andrews McMeel Syndication, “follows the adventures of an unexpected role model: Edwin ‘Frazz’ Frazier, an elementary school janitor who is also a Renaissance man.
“As he sweeps the room, he whistles Beethoven. Or Lyle Lovett. He paints the woodwork of the classrooms; he paints a Da Vinci on the cafeteria wall. He’s a trusted authority figure who’s every kid’s buddy.
Frazz “took the janitorial job when he was a struggling songwriter, and when he finally sold a hit song, he decided to stay in school,” the union said.
It should also be noted that for his work on Frazz, Mallet won a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council in 2003 and 2005 for excellence in communicating values and ethics.
Eliot, from Eugene, Oregon, retired the daily Stone Soup comic in 2015. It then continued with the Sunday-only cartoon, and when it ends next week, Eliot will have entertained and informed us with his comics for 25 years.
His Irreverent Stone Soup followed the saga of an extended, blended family, featuring two working sister mothers who live right across from each other.
Val and Joan shared life with their globetrotting mother, husbands and children. And, as Eliot’s union described it, they experienced the hassle of working parents, preschool tantrums, college angst, and the everyday love that binds a family together.
Eliot has donated his collection of original artwork, including the Daily and Sunday Stone Soup comics, as well as his previous comics, Patience and Sarah and Sister City, to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Ireland. ‘Ohio State University.
The museum’s namesake was a Chillicothe native and Dispatch cartoonist from 1908 until his death in 1935.
Ohio State reported in 2018 that when Eliot donated her artwork, which joined her collection of correspondence, contracts, scrapbooks, and publicity material already at the Cartoon Library, she stated that “The Ohio State University has a treasure in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Research Library. For all of us in the cartoon community, this is a great gift.
“It’s a beautiful repository for our life’s work, a place where we are understood and appreciated and where our work is carefully cataloged and preserved,” she said. “When deciding what to do with my cartoon archive (nearly 7,000 comics) and my papers, I knew I would be honored to house them at OSU. Stone Soup is my legacy, and knowing that it will be part of this amazing archive makes me very, very happy.
Online Researcher-Athlete Award
In its 39th year, the Dispatch Scholar Athlete Awards honored graduates from 117 central Ohio schools who are elite performers in the classroom, athletics, and community service.
With sponsors Encova Insurance, OhioHealth, Battelle, WBNS-10TV, Lamar and Abercrombie & Fitch, The Dispatch hosted a virtual awards show on July 11, and a special section honoring college-athletes will appear in the Dispatch on Saturday July 25. .
Our first varsity athlete awards celebration show hosted by WBNS sports presenter Dom Tiberi and featuring celebrity guest Gabby Douglas, London 2012 Olympics silver medalist, announced this year’s scholarship winners. . If you missed the July 11 broadcast, you can still watch it again by going to www.dispatchshows.com/ohio-scholar-athlete-awards.
Twenty-three students won a share of $78,000 in college scholarships. Over the past four decades, The Dispatch and its sponsors have awarded more than $1.2 million to Central Ohio high school graduates.
Thought of the day
Avid readers of the Daily Almanac in the Life section have noticed that the “Thought for the Day” is no longer part of this feature.
The Associated Press, which compiles the almanac, discontinued this part of the feature.
Alan D. Miller is editor of The Dispatch.
amiller@dispatch.com
@dispatcheditor